Through a mirror, darkly
LJ has eaten every comment I tried to make today up until an hour ago. Not just thrown the stupid database error that you can recover from by hitting the browser back button and trying to post the comment again; irrevocably eaten. NOT ON, LJ.
Let's see if it will let me post this.
The Master has always been the Doctor's dark reflection, and it was very satisfying to see the way that dynamic played out in the current incarnation. Simm's Master has the manic quality, the superficial humor and the underlying deadly seriousness and the rigid certainty in himself and what he's doing, bent toward destruction and self-gratification, which are for him the same thing, the way the Doctor takes pleasure in seeing life going on around him. (I thought it was telling that the Master admired Earth in some of the same ways the Doctor does, for its silliness and inventiveness and Teletubbies, for the indomitable human spirit, and then set out to destroy it, as if that naturally followed.) The Master and the Doctor talk openly and honestly with each other, each recognizing in the other the only person left who can understand. (And is it even subtext at this point? Holy slash, batman!) And because of that, I thought the background the Doctor gave on the Master, that he's mad--something that is in a way far more frightening than evil--was especially revealing, because the Doctor talked about it as if he understood exactly what happened to the Master in that moment, looking into the void, and perhaps he does; perhaps the Doctor went a little mad himself.
And because he feels that kinship, and because he is so terribly alone, it's probably best that the Master is intent on destroying Earth and enslaving the human population and hurting Jack and Martha, because otherwise, I wonder how hard it would be for the Doctor to try to destroy him and make that solitude permanent.
In the older shows, the Master never needed motivation; he was just evil, because there are evil things out there in the universe, and there's no need to explain the cause. It reminds me very much of the shift in the way the Cylons were written between the original Battlestar Galactica and the current incarnation; television conventions of the time didn't require the villains to have motivations of their own, but now, we want better storytelling, richer explanations of what we're seeing.
Also, a writer for the Guardian wants to correct a recent Torchwood casting announcement where the actor in question referred to the show as "UK sci-fi television favorite Torchwood" on his website. "This is misinformed." Hee. After the collective WTF on my flist, I can't say that I've been too interested in checking the show out, and this does not change my mind.
* * * * *
And speaking of WTF, I am practicing the "if you can't say something nice, and also can't not rant about something you have ranted about repeatedly already, don't say anything at all" school of not reviewing SGA's season finale.
My original post on "Unending", and a couple of additional thoughts on the scene between Daniel and Vala.
I've been trying to put my finger on exactly why, even though I think the writers missed a mark and lost some important balance in that scene, I was really glad they'd at least tried it, and I think it has to do with the fact that they were at least trying to bring Daniel around full circle from the first episode, which was the starting point of his loss. By the end of the show, every member of SG-1 was walking around with some pretty massive damage, but most of it had its roots in events that happened before they stepped through the Stargate for the first time, Jack with the loss of his son and disintegration of his marriage, Sam with her strained relationship with her father, Teal'c with his years as Apophis's First Prime, Vala with her time as a host, and Cam with his injury and his struggle to recover. (Though I think Cam was a border case, someone who in the end might have become warped--not in bad ways exactly, but in interesting ones--by his time on SG-1, learning to falsify mission reports and cover for friends in the kinds of morally ambiguous situations he'd never dreamed he'd be in the middle of as one of the "good guys," and one of the things I'm saddest about with the show's cancellation is that that development got cut short). But although his academic career was in ruins before he went to Abydos, Daniel's real damage started with the first episode of the show, and has been almost entirely tied to the events we've seen play out onscreen over ten seasons since then. So although he certainly deserved for Vala to kick him in the balls and make him grovel for three months for that deliberately cruel rant (and I think it was something he did very deliberately, because I do think he genuinely thought she was playing with him, and he wanted to make good and sure he never faced that temptation again; he wouldn't let her back out, he pushed the conversation all the way), it was also important, I think, for Daniel to acknowledge that Sha're's loss had been weighing on him for so long, and to move past it, even if it took someone as pushy as Vala to motivate him, because it meant that he wasn't so damaged that he never could, and that meant there was hope for them all. And I do think it took someone as pushy as Vala to motivate him, and that otherwise it would be something he thought about and never did. So. After multiple viewings and a shitload of rationalization, I no longer want to punch Daniel in the face. Hooray!
* * * * *
It turns out that if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing, replacing your own foundation might not actually save you any money. The neighbors are remarkably calm; I would have been homicidal.
Let's see if it will let me post this.
The Master has always been the Doctor's dark reflection, and it was very satisfying to see the way that dynamic played out in the current incarnation. Simm's Master has the manic quality, the superficial humor and the underlying deadly seriousness and the rigid certainty in himself and what he's doing, bent toward destruction and self-gratification, which are for him the same thing, the way the Doctor takes pleasure in seeing life going on around him. (I thought it was telling that the Master admired Earth in some of the same ways the Doctor does, for its silliness and inventiveness and Teletubbies, for the indomitable human spirit, and then set out to destroy it, as if that naturally followed.) The Master and the Doctor talk openly and honestly with each other, each recognizing in the other the only person left who can understand. (And is it even subtext at this point? Holy slash, batman!) And because of that, I thought the background the Doctor gave on the Master, that he's mad--something that is in a way far more frightening than evil--was especially revealing, because the Doctor talked about it as if he understood exactly what happened to the Master in that moment, looking into the void, and perhaps he does; perhaps the Doctor went a little mad himself.
And because he feels that kinship, and because he is so terribly alone, it's probably best that the Master is intent on destroying Earth and enslaving the human population and hurting Jack and Martha, because otherwise, I wonder how hard it would be for the Doctor to try to destroy him and make that solitude permanent.
In the older shows, the Master never needed motivation; he was just evil, because there are evil things out there in the universe, and there's no need to explain the cause. It reminds me very much of the shift in the way the Cylons were written between the original Battlestar Galactica and the current incarnation; television conventions of the time didn't require the villains to have motivations of their own, but now, we want better storytelling, richer explanations of what we're seeing.
Also, a writer for the Guardian wants to correct a recent Torchwood casting announcement where the actor in question referred to the show as "UK sci-fi television favorite Torchwood" on his website. "This is misinformed." Hee. After the collective WTF on my flist, I can't say that I've been too interested in checking the show out, and this does not change my mind.
* * * * *
And speaking of WTF, I am practicing the "if you can't say something nice, and also can't not rant about something you have ranted about repeatedly already, don't say anything at all" school of not reviewing SGA's season finale.
My original post on "Unending", and a couple of additional thoughts on the scene between Daniel and Vala.
I've been trying to put my finger on exactly why, even though I think the writers missed a mark and lost some important balance in that scene, I was really glad they'd at least tried it, and I think it has to do with the fact that they were at least trying to bring Daniel around full circle from the first episode, which was the starting point of his loss. By the end of the show, every member of SG-1 was walking around with some pretty massive damage, but most of it had its roots in events that happened before they stepped through the Stargate for the first time, Jack with the loss of his son and disintegration of his marriage, Sam with her strained relationship with her father, Teal'c with his years as Apophis's First Prime, Vala with her time as a host, and Cam with his injury and his struggle to recover. (Though I think Cam was a border case, someone who in the end might have become warped--not in bad ways exactly, but in interesting ones--by his time on SG-1, learning to falsify mission reports and cover for friends in the kinds of morally ambiguous situations he'd never dreamed he'd be in the middle of as one of the "good guys," and one of the things I'm saddest about with the show's cancellation is that that development got cut short). But although his academic career was in ruins before he went to Abydos, Daniel's real damage started with the first episode of the show, and has been almost entirely tied to the events we've seen play out onscreen over ten seasons since then. So although he certainly deserved for Vala to kick him in the balls and make him grovel for three months for that deliberately cruel rant (and I think it was something he did very deliberately, because I do think he genuinely thought she was playing with him, and he wanted to make good and sure he never faced that temptation again; he wouldn't let her back out, he pushed the conversation all the way), it was also important, I think, for Daniel to acknowledge that Sha're's loss had been weighing on him for so long, and to move past it, even if it took someone as pushy as Vala to motivate him, because it meant that he wasn't so damaged that he never could, and that meant there was hope for them all. And I do think it took someone as pushy as Vala to motivate him, and that otherwise it would be something he thought about and never did. So. After multiple viewings and a shitload of rationalization, I no longer want to punch Daniel in the face. Hooray!
* * * * *
It turns out that if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing, replacing your own foundation might not actually save you any money. The neighbors are remarkably calm; I would have been homicidal.